Chapter One

Some people think angels come in the form of people. It'd make sense, because it'd be easiest to talk to them like that, but that's not really their favourite form. Other people seem to think that they are millions of stories tall and have twenty billion eyes and four heads. This would be the angels attempt to make themselves look bad ass whenever a prophet gets a peek of them. In their true form, angels are most like humanoid phoenix. They're completely made of white light that, to the untrained eye, looks a bit like extremely hot fire. It's really more like energy – More formally, it's known as their grace. The energy is shaped almost like man. They have fingers and feet and toes and even ovalish shapes on the tops of their heads. And then, there are two – and sometimes, for the bigwigs, a few more – huge wings that spread from their backs. The energy flares off these in flames, sometimes even flickering off small bits at the tips. When on earth, it's customary to hide their true forms, as sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming to humans. Well, that and the fact that it'd kill everyone who saw them. Some people with exceptional eyes, this usually being mediums and psychics, have enough time to make out their form before their eyes burn out. There are even a few that, if they look away fast enough, got away with just going blind. Of course, for a person of this profession, this is the most upsetting thing to ever happen to them and they tend to kill themselves if the angels' true form didn't get them first. They, however, are very proud of their wings. You can be sure of this, because when upstairs, they flaunt them around and care for them in public – Comparable to a young girl with very pretty blonde hair who naively believes she's got the best when it's clearly her older sister who is several times more intelligent than her that would have the prettiest hair if she only bothered to make it up for once in her life. Because of this, they aren't particularly fond of hiding them. Humans, as any person with sufficient eyesight can clearly see, do not have wings and if you are an angel trying to fit in on Earth, being a naked ape with huge appendages sprouting from behind you will likely not go over with your superiors. Also, there's the whole problem with the angels' wings burning people eyes out. To solve this problem, they made them an ebony or golden colour made of silky feathers that would make even the finest little silk worm weep at its touch whenever they did bother to show them in human form. Like was previously explained, however, it's commonly not a good idea to do so. All this eventually led to the final decision of the angels to not even bother with humanity and go to the species that all the people stuck in offices in the middle of spring envied, anyway. The angels chose to take the shape of very lovely, highly sophisticated, impossibly clever, birds.Most people, they could care less about this. Angels, to some of them, were about as real as Santa Claus – who, surprisingly enough, was actually a real person named St. Nicolas that gave toys to orphans in his time, but had just long since died. To others, they were real, but they weren't really anything important. After all, the Creator was the one who made them in the first place and as far as they were concerned, humanity was on the same level as angels, if not better than them. And then, you had that select few that were a tad bit obsessed. And by a tad bit I, of course, mean the words freaking crazy over was about twelve times more appropriate. They sometimes are called theolophiles or just plain angel-crazy. These theolophiles included a young girl named Malory “Lory” Kah. She wasn't exactly what you'd consider your average human. She wore strange clothes and did strange things and talked too loud and too fast, but she was a good person - A kind person, even – and that was why she was friends with Ario Pacrifa.Ario was silent, but not in the way that one is silent because he's shy or incredibly withdrawn. He was quiet in the way he never had any reason to say more than he wanted to. He didn't particularly enjoy talking and with no need to force himself to, with Lory being the way she was, he just didn't. On this particular Tuesday, he wore a button down and a pair of jeans. Lory walked beside him. It was a vibrant June day and birds tweeted at them. Well, not at them, but Ario liked to think so. It wasn't like they were talking to Lory, though she seemed adamant to talk about them. “You know,” her voice was as weirdly pitched as her personality. Both a little high and a bit low at the same time. It was a comforting voice, Ario had always thought, but a terrifying one as well, “Some theolophiles think that angels can take the form of any thing they want. Do you think they'd want to be birds? Birds are very cool. I mean, if I had pretty wings like that, I wouldn't want to give them up completely, you know? But maybe they wouldn't want cheap wings after having such perfect ones. What do you think, Ario?” He glanced over to see if she actually expected an answer. She wasn't even looking at him, too busy with the next thing on her mind. He turned his vision to the sky, spotting something. A few of their conversation subjects flew by and they seemed to be at peace – At least more than the busy employees that hustled and bustled while the two of them strolled on an average summer day. Then the most peculiar thing happened. The birds – Which were the puffy little chickadees that lived in almost everywhere in the Americas – were goofing around between them and swishing around when a Blue Jay landed on a tree beside them. In record time, all the birds stopped and lined up facing it in what an untrained eye would think was a respectful line of soldiers to their superior officer. And then, the Jay started to speak. “You idiots!” it screeched, quietly, “Stop messing around! We have a job!” Ario's mouth fell open a bit, aghast. “Chirp!” one of the chickadees laughed, a little too loudly. The others burst into laughter as well, causing quite a ruckus. If it hadn't just been the two kids walking down the street and Lory wasn't so busy with her rant on the likelihood of cherubs actually being in charge of the love affairs of humans, someone else definitely would have heard it. “I said shut up!” the Jay snapped, making all the chickadees fall silent, “Good. Now. Let's go before the damn Titmice get to the old lady.”“But we're having fuuuuunn...” one chickadee complained.“Wonderful. Stay here then,” the Jay swatted him off the branch. The others watched as the chickadee fell to the ground, breaking a few bones when it hit the ground. It attempted to climb to its feet and fly back up, but instead, it missed by quite a distance when the wind picked up and ran right into the face of Lory. She screamed and held out her hands to see a bird whining unhappily there. Ario had watch this whole procession and glanced up just in time to see the Jay and other chickadees fly away.“Aw... Poor thing,” Lory frowned, eyeing the wing that'd been broken, “We should take it home and nurse it back to health.” “I don't think that's a good-” Ario tried, objecting to bringing home a bird that apparently could talk.“Let's go!” Lory called, starting back towards his house, “Last one there is a spoiled omelet!” Airo watched her run off in defeat. This was not gonna end well for him at all.